


Party Like A Rockstar

by skyline



Category: Big Time Rush
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-11
Updated: 2011-06-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 01:46:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“But what about you? What are you going to do?” “Follow you,” Carlos said with a smile. “Isn’t that obvious? I’ll follow you anywhere.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Party Like A Rockstar

They said Kendall’s dad was a hero. Faceless suit after suit after suit; shiny brass and damp eyes passed Kendall by, cooing at baby Katie and offering his mother their most solemn condolences.  
  
The whole day, only one man knelt down to Kendall’s level and finally said to him, “Your father was a great man.”  
  
But then, Mr. Garcia had been Mr. Knight’s partner forever, and Kendall and his son were best friends.  
  
Kendall remembers Carlos’s face that day, the day he thought the world was ending. His favorite thing about Carlos has always been that he looks like he’s trying to hold back a laugh. Like he finds everything about life so interesting, so _funny_.  That awful day was the first time that Kendall had seen Carlos look truly serious.  
  
Right up until he grabbed hold of Kendall’s hand and said, “ _Tag_. You’re it.”  
  
Kendall and Carlos spent the rest of the wake running around, hiding behind furniture and using adults as shields. They got yelled at by no less than three old people, but Kendall’s mom and Carlos’s parents didn’t say a word. It was like they knew that it was exactly what Kendall needed. And every time he started to get too sad; every time Kendall’s eyes drifted over to the closed casket, his dad’s new home, Carlos would be there. He’d hold Kendall’s hand and think up a new game, and then another one, until he didn’t hurt so much.  
  
Later that night, Mr. Garcia let Kendall and Carlos sleep in the tree house he’d built them when they were five. They huddled beneath the blankets and talked about their town; the kingdom they were going to rule over one day. The kingdom they had to rule, now that Kendall’s dad was no longer there to give them gigantic hugs and rides in his squad car.  
  
“You get to be king,” Carlos declared, snuggled into Kendall’s side.  
  
“Why me?” Kendall asked, surprised, because usually they fought over who got to wear the crown that came with Kendall’s Arthurian knight play set.  
  
“You’re better at all that stuff anyway,” Carlos said.   
  
“But what about you? What are you going to do?”  
  
“Follow you,” Carlos said with a smile. “Isn’t that obvious? I’ll follow you anywhere.”  
  
And he has.   


\---

  
The funny part about realizations is that they don’t just happen. You don’t have one and move on.   
  
You revisit them. You reanalyze them. You look at them in different shades, different moods, different lights until you understand the shape and the feel of them, and then you start all over again.  
  
When Kendall first realized he had a thing for Carlos, it was just like that.   
  
Initially it wasn’t a big deal. He didn’t have very many other friends to compare his feelings with. Kendall knew Logan and James way back when, of course. They’d been in the same class since preschool. But being classmates doesn’t make people insta-buddies, and Logan was kind of a nerd and James was kind of stuck up, and Kendall had tunnel vision that mostly focused on Carlos.   
  
Then they all joined the same peewee hockey league. The more they got thrown together, the more James and Logan began to infiltrate Kendall’s life. The more he began to realize that no, he didn’t like Logan and James the same way he liked his best friend since birth. He was attracted to them, sure. But it wasn’t the same.   
  
He tried not to let it bug him. Feelings were boring, and Kendall had better things to do with his time. Like hockey.   
  
The older he got, the more he realized what a problem it was. A problem that he had to keep facing.   
  
For instance, right after the band got started.   
  
“Which room do you want?” James asked, glancing back and forth between the two rooms in their brand new California apartment. “And who do you want to share with?”  
  
“Logan,” Kendall squeaked, because the idea of sharing with Carlos made his heart jump into his throat.  
  
Or like when he finally got dumped by Jo.  
  
“I don’t get why you’re doing this.”  
  
Kindly, she said, “Because I’m not the one you want.”  
  
As time passed, Kendall figures it out.  
  
He doesn’t want girls.  
  
Kendall has a thing for _boys_ with doe eyes and clearly defined clavicles, for guys who smile like it’s the only thing worth doing and have enough charisma to rile up a room. And he’s okay with that. He is.  
  
Kendall doesn’t have a problem with liking dudes. People are people, and some have lady parts, and some have man parts, and they’re all good and all fun, as long as there are no wonky diseases up in there.  
  
What he has a problem with is liking Carlos. Because, for one, it’s kind of like pedophilia. Carlos has more moments of masculinity and adultness than he lets on, but that doesn’t change the fact that eighty percent of the time he’s innocence and light and good hearted mischief. Much like a six year old.  
  
Except Kendall has never met a six year old he’s had sexy thoughts about.  
  
And second, wanting Carlos hurts.   
  
Carlos is always off on his own adventure. He’s always so carefree. Kendall doesn’t want to be the person who reels him back in. The person who makes him crash back to the ground by forcing him to face something heavy, like love that he doesn’t, _can’t_ return.   
  
A huge part of Kendall doesn’t even want Carlos to reciprocate the things he feels, because everyone that Kendall has ever loved has let him down. He doesn’t think he can take it if Carlos somehow manages to do that.   
  
He doesn’t think he can take it if _he_ somehow lets _Carlos_ down. For people like Carlos, things are black and white. He doesn’t rehash the same theorem nine ways ‘til Sunday. He doesn’t have a miniature life crisis every time real life becomes just a smidge clearer. Carlos is the only hope Kendall has left to hold onto, anymore.   
  
Still, he wants him in this dangerous, covetous way that tears at him inside. Kendall’s not sure what being in love is supposed to feel like, but he always imagined puppies and hearts and rainbows and sparkleponies, not this. Not sandpits and so much doubt he feels like he’s drowning in it. With every day that passes; the deeper he falls, the harder it gets.   
  
Kendall is strong in a million different ways, but he’s figured out that love is always going to be the thing that makes him weak. He’s trying to learn how to be okay with that. He hasn’t found a way. Not yet.   
  
It’s almost like loving Carlos more makes him love himself less, but he doesn’t want to accept that. Kendall knows that we let the moments that hurt us define us. We can use pain to make us stronger, or we let it weaken us from the inside, until it eats away at everything that makes us human. So he sure as hell has been trying to get through it. Ever since he first came to LA.   
  
Kendall never wanted electric lights and club music. He never wanted the neon glow of drinking too much near four in the morning and walking the streets of a city that’s so different from Minnesota it could be an alien land. He never wanted any of this, but he has it, and he figures he should make the most of it while he can.   
  
After the breakup with Jo, Kendall starts partying. Nothing too awful, nothing that will really get him into trouble with the paparazzi. But yeah, he’s got a reputation. He likes to keep busy. To stay out of the apartment.   
  
Anything’s better than watching his best friends with dark eyes and wantingwantingwanting.  


  
\---

  
The night everything goes down, Kendall finds James in the kitchen, hiding Logan’s external hard drive. Logan has a massive porn collection. It is literally over eighty gigs. He keeps it all on the hard drive so that Kendall’s mom doesn’t run into it when she’s borrowing his computer for her online shopping.  
  
His mother is intensely technologically challenged, but she’s incessantly borrowing their laptops so she can see what the latest is from Marchesa.   
  
And sometimes she likes to poke around in their stuff. Kendall figures she’s in his room that very second, trying to figure out what kind of secrets they’ve got hidden. He gives James his best Good Job smile, because James does well with positive reinforcement.  
  
James smiles back and asks, “You going out tonight?”  
  
“I go out every night.”  
  
“You’re an animal,” he agrees.   
  
“Want to come?”  
  
James likes to party. Okay, James loves to party. He’s Kendall’s constant wingman. But today he shrugs and says, “Sorry. Can’t. I’ve got a go see during our lunch break tomorrow, and I can’t have any bags under my eyes. Don’t bother asking Logan, either. He’s studying for one of his stupid college courses.”  
  
“I think that’s an oxymoron.”  
  
“Did you just call me a moron?”  
  
Kendall rolls with the awful pun, mocking him. “Sure. Why not.”  
  
James rolls his eyes. “You’re grumpy today.”  
  
“I am not.”  
  
“You are. You know who I bet would love to come with you? Carlos.”  
  
“Carlos loves a party,” Kendall agrees, already determined not to invite him. He makes sure never to bring Carlos along unless James or Logan is going to be there, acting as a buffer between them. Spending time around the kid sober is hard enough. Kendall absolutely does not want to bring liquor into the equation.   
  
“You’re not going to invite him, are you? Scared you’re going to jump his bones?”  
  
“James,” Kendall says, kind of harshly because. Okay. He was not expecting that.   
  
“Dude, no judgment. If you want to take a body shot off of Carlos’s rock hard stomach, that’s your business.”  
  
Which is possibly the worst thing James could have said, because suddenly all Kendall can imagine is pouring tequila into Carlos’s navel, salt smattered across his abdomen, a wedge of lime in his mouth and- oh god. Kendall is one hundred percent sure that he has a special seat reserved in hell, just for thinking it.   
  
“I mean, my stomach’s in better shape,” James is saying, “But I’m not sure if I’d be comfortable with your tongue so close to my dick.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“You really should invite him.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” Kendall asks dismissively. He’s already grabbing his keys, well on his way out of 2J.   
  
Except then James crosses his arms and says, “You’re going to fuck everything up if you don’t.”  
  
Kendall sets his keys back on the counter.   
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“He thinks you’ve been avoiding him.”  
  
“I haven’t.”  
  
“Yeah. You have. You’re in love with him, and you’re going to screw it up.”  
  
Well. Shit. Leave it to James to get all unexpectedly _perceptive_.   
  
“You think I don’t know that? Why do you think I’ve been avoiding him?”  
  
“I think Logan will never forgive you if you hurt Carlos.”  
  
“And you?”  
  
“I think you’ll never forgive yourself if you hurt him. Isn’t that punishment enough?”  
  
“ _James_.”  
  
Kendall thinks about this time, when he was fourteen years old and buzzed on stolen beer and horny as fuck, and he thought with his dick instead of his head. He remembers fumbling James’s jeans down around his knees, the white hot electricity sparking between them, the way James whimpered his name when he came. The way they couldn’t look each other in the eye for weeks afterwards.   
  
“I’m over it.” James shrugs.   
  
“Are you-“  
  
“Yeah.” James rakes a hand through his hair and smiles, completely genuine. “We’re all a little bit in love with you, you know. Me, Logan, and Carlos. We always have been. But haven’t you ever wondered why none of us have ever made a move?”  
  
Kendall stares at him expectantly.   
  
James says, “It’s because you’re an _idiot_. You don’t mean to make a mess of things, but you do it, constantly. And no amount of fixing ever makes up for the fact that you screwed things up in the first place. You have a good heart, but your head is fucked.”  
  
And Kendall understands, because there are times when he still looks at James and wants him, wants to see him in his bed, panting and fucked out, and there are times when he imagines the way his friend looked in the palm of his hand. Kendall loves James like a brother, but there are still times he wants to fuck him, one way or another, because he secretly hates that he is willing to sacrifice so much for another person. Sometimes he admits to himself that he gave up on the band that one time in its infancy because he wanted to watch James hurt, because it felt good to choose himself for once. He loves James, but he doesn’t love him nearly enough, and it’s just one more way that Kendall is screwed up. He doesn’t _like_ watching James hurt, but its part of their pattern, part of their friendship, and he only ever regrets it afterwards.   
  
The thought of hurting Carlos, even though he’s never done it, not even once, makes him ache.   
  
“You’re wrong, though.”  
  
“I am?”  
  
“Carlos is not a little bit in love with me. But I’ll. Invite him. I guess.”  
  
“Good.” James looks pleased.   
  
Kendall wishes things had worked out with James, sometimes. He thinks it might have been easier. With James he knows where he stands. He wears all of his vulnerabilities on his sleeve, and it’s no secret that Kendall is one more thing that makes him vulnerable.   
  
The thing about vulnerability though, is that it can be used as a weapon. James uses his like that. He pushes all his weaknesses outwards, shows them to people up front so that when they eventually run away, they won’t be able to say it is because of a flaw that James hid.  
  
James and Kendall are too alike in some ways; the things they put on display for all the world to see are not actually the people that they are. They hide those secret parts of themselves, guarding them zealously. And it makes Kendall uncomfortable that James has seen some of those things, back when he wasn’t scared of sharing. He knows it bothers James the same way; that Kendall knows the parts of him that are darker than others.   
  
It has never once bothered Kendall that Carlos knows every part of him. And that is how Kendall knows that what he feels for him is stronger. Better. Right.   
  
Or it would be, if it wasn’t so very wrong.   


\---

  
“I can’t believe you’re doing this commercial. You look ridiculous.” Is the first thing Kendall says when he finds Carlos. He’s spent the past few days filming this commercial for some ridiculous soft drink. It’s a commercial that Gustavo outlawed them from even considering undertaking, but Carlos wanted to do it so badly that Kelly convinced their record producer to cave.   
  
Now that Kendall’s on Carlos’s set, he can kind of see why Gustavo thought this was a bad idea.   
  
Carlos does this dance on the spot, a swivel of his hips and knocking of knees, the thin, skin tight silver of his suit sliding across his abdomen as he shakes.   
  
“Ridiculous,” Kendall declares again in his decisive voice, the voice he uses when he wants to clearly enunciate his opinion so that he won’t get misquoted later, but inside he’s trembling, the denim of his jeans tight as a vise around his suddenly interested cock.   
  
“I’m totally doing this for Logan’s benefit. He’s got a thing for aliens.”  
  
“I do not have a thing,” Logan blusters. He’s been on set all day, trying to help Carlos catch up on math homework between takes.“For aliens, god, that’s not even-“  
  
“Dude, chill. You’re not seriously telling me you don’t have a thing for the red head running around in the chainmail thong?”  
  
“Oh. Um.” Logan blushes. “I might have a…thing for…aliens.”  
  
Carlos’s silvery-space age makeup shines in the harsh light of the set, his eyes deep, dark pools and Kendall wants to fold him into his body, to take him away from this grown up world of make believe. He’s suddenly so scared that he’ll lose Carlos to it, forever.   
  
What better place is there for a boy who never wants to grow up?   
  
He pushes his fear down deep and says, “I’m going to a party tonight. You coming?”  
  
Carlos’s eyes crinkle at the corners and he says, “Duh.”  
  
“What, I’m not invited?” Logan demands from his director’s chair.   
  
“Do you want to come, Loginator?” Kendall sighs.   
  
Logan tilts his head to the side and says, “Not really, no. I have to study.”  
  
“Thought so.” Kendall grins at Carlos, who beams right back. It makes him feel weak inside, but he can’t look away.   
  
Kendall’s heart is a compass, a needle spinning in every direction. But it always comes back to Carlos, his magnetic North.   
  
\---  
  
“Dude. This place has got an ice luge. For vodka. My life is complete,” Carlos declares the moment they walk in the door of the bar. Kendall stares at the luge and silently resolves to keep Carlos as far away from it as possible. It kind of looks like a miniature swirly slide.   
  
They’re meeting some musicians Kendall met at the studio, older guys who’ve been in the industry way longer but haven’t quite lost their souls yet. The first to see them is a bassist who yells, “Knight!” Then he sees Carlos and says, “You brought a friend.”  
  
Carlos grins. The bassist claps him on the back and says conspiratorially, “You have balls, man, being friends with Knight.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Have you seen his face?”   
  
“Obviously, I’ve seen his face, I live with him.”   
  
“I’m just saying, no human being should suffer that way.”  
  
Carlos laughs long and loud, so Kendall decides that he doesn’t actually have to punch the dude in the nose. Right now. There’s always time for violence later.   
  
He orders them up a tray of tequila shots, and for a second Kendall feels like maybe he should drink them all down, like he has to protect Carlos from the big bad world of neon and liquor.   
  
Carlos is watching him with a wicked grin, the same expression he wears when he knows they’re going to pull of the most epic prank. But this isn’t a joke; this is two underage kids in a bar, surrounded by musicians much older and cooler than they can ever hope to be. Kendall tosses back the tequila shot, a golden burn in the back of his throat, throughout his chest as he swallows it down.   
  
The way Carlos watches him feels like a warm glow in his heart.   
  
Kendall waits until Carlos downs his shots easily, like he’s practiced for this moment.   
  
“Your boy can hold his liquor,” the bassist tells him, eyes dancing, and Kendall doesn’t like the shape of his teeth or the shadows that deepen his smile. Even in the dimly lit bar, Carlos is one hundred percent golden, body painted in shades of caramel and honey and maple syrup. Kendall wants to protect his light from this shadowy man, and who chooses to play bass, anyway? It’s like, the instrument for people who are too lazy to play guitar.  
  
But the bar is noisy, and Kendall likes that. He likes the music so loud that it’s drummed into his head, that he can’t hear anything else except the beat in his chest like a second heartbeat. They spend a few hours like that, drinking shots and flirting with girls and smiling like they’re kings of the whole fucking world. Kendall’s sort of buzzed, tapping his head to the beat, thinking in the golden afterglow of the tequila that he might actually want to dance when-  
  
“What is that?” Kendall demands, staring at this gigantic like, _pot_ of red punch that the bartender has just brought to his little group, complete with a set of straws.  
  
“ It’s the bowl of life,” one of the guitarists crows, and Kendall distantly wonders if all guitarists are huge stoners, or just the ones that he runs into.   
  
He hisses to Carlos, “Do not drink that. I forbid you.”  
  
“Forbid?” Carlos looks wounded. “That’s harsh, man. Why don’t you want me to drink from the bowl of life?”  
  
“Because it is not the bowl of life, it is the bowl of death, or at least the bowl of alcohol poisoning. Do you want to spend the night in the hospital?”  
  
Carlos shrugs.   
  
“Wouldn’t be the first time. I’m going in,” Carlos announces, patting his helmet.   
  
“You are _not_.”  
  
“Am too,” Carlos says, “The only way you’re going to stop me is if you-“ Kendall grabs up all the straws and begins to drink. “–do that.”  
  
“Dude, look at Knight go. He’s so _fucked_ ,” the bassist yells.   
  
Kendall tries to focus on drinking from all five straws and not the burn of juice and liquor in his esophagus or the way Carlos’s fingers are rubbing gentle against his spine, quietly urging him on. When Kendall finally pulls back, bowl drained, stomach slightly nauseous, Carlos beams and him and shouts, “Let’s dance.”  
  
Kendall looks to the right and then to the left, and then, when he is one hundred percent positive those words didn’t come from somebody else, he asks, “What?”  
  
Because two boys don’t dance together in a crowded bar. Not when they’re surrounded by gorgeous girls. He might be drunk, but he knows that’s part of some unwritten law, a law that if broken makes you automatically _gayer than gay_. Which Kendall is, but he’s pretty sure it’s not a label Carlos wants.  
  
Except Carlos doesn’t seem to care. He pulls Kendall out onto the floor, and in the dancing lights, Carlos’s pearly white smile shatters like sparkling stars, broken by shadows and color and then becoming whole once more. Carlos presses their bodies up close. He’s joking around, pretending that he’s a girl. He grinds up against Kendall’s hips and it’s like electricity in his veins.  
  
The music rumbles deep in Kendall’s chest like the warning of an oncoming storm. He hears Carlos yell something joyous, and it’s just like being back home in Minnesota.  
  
At the first crack of thunder, Carlos was always the first one to run straight out into the downpour, to skid through the rain to Kendall’s house and pull him, grinning, out into their own private, laughter-drenched, sodden world. They would splash through puddles to James’s house, or Logan’s and try to coax them outside, but in those moments on the way, the entire town belonged solely to them. It was like that now, with Carlos pressed into his side, shimmying and shaking and whooping to the music. Even though they were surrounded by people, it was his eyes blazing into Kendall’s, his heart beating in time with Kendall’s pulse. It was like no one else even existed.  
  
Carlos runs his fingers up the sides of Kendall’s thighs, streaking heat through the denim onto Kendall’s skin. Kendall’s very obviously horny now, and he expects Carlos to jump away, but his eyes are blazing, from the tequila or something else, and he keeps it up, thrusting his ass against Kendall’s interested cock in time to the pounding bassline.  
  
Carlos turns, rolling his hips against Kendall’s tantalizingly slow and he has to _know_. Kendall feels like the tent in his jeans is impossible to miss, but its Carlos, sweet, oblivious Carlos and even with the teasing look quirking his lips, he could still be caught up in the joke. Kendall shivers and tries to enjoy it, tries to get what he can out of the friction before Carlos realizes and jerks away, knowing he’s going to feel like a dick when he’s sober for taking advantage of a friend. But then he notices that Carlos isn’t exactly flaccid, either. He sees this fine tremor in his friend’s neck and shoulders and feels him hard against the front of his body and oh. Kendall can work with this. Definitely.  
  
Or not, because that would be wrong. Wrong, he repeats to himself. Wrong.  
  
It’s late, and Kendall’s not thinking very clearly, but he knows it’s a bad idea when  Carlos curls his fingers through Kendall’s belt loops, pressing their bodies close with a grin. “We should find something to do.”  
  
Kendall’s breath is caught in his throat, and he’s watching the way the neon lights advertising foreign beer play over the golden brown skin of Carlos’s collarbone. He tries to remind himself that Carlos is drunk, and that taking advantage of drunk friends is not a friendly thing to do.   
  
And then he catches sight of Carlos eyeing the luge and thinks that he shouldn’t have worried.   
  
“No.”  
  
“Why not?” Carlos whines, but it’s a hot breath on Kendall’s ear now, pleading, needy. “Let’s have some fun.”   
  
Kendall makes a noise, because Carlos is obviously trying to torture him. He says, “The luge isn’t- we’ve had enough.”  
  
“Who’s talking about drinking more?” Carlos laughs. “I like you like this. _Drunk_. You should drink bowls of liquor more often.”  
  
Carlos rubs up against Kendall again, and he looks at Carlos’s cocksure smile and thinks that he may have been manipulated, here. Which. Okay.   
  
“Let’s go home,” Kendall says, because he feels like maybe he needs fresh air in a bad way, before he does something ridiculously stupid.   
  
Outside its arid, this dry heat that warms him from the inside, and Kendall can barely remember nights in Minnesota where the cold seeped straight into his bones anymore. He can barely remember, but he misses them all the same, misses the clear head clarity of home.  
  
Carlos spins on the concrete, teetering a little bit, and Kendall wants to put his arms around him, wants to catch him and make sure that he doesn’t fall, but he’s not so steady on his feet either. So he watches and laughs, mirror Carlos’s brilliant smile back at him. He’s so busy watching that he stumbles into a street light and says, “Hey. Where did this come from?”  
  
Carlos’s hands on his hips steady him, distract him from the blossoming pain on his forehead. “That’s not the right way, dude.”  
  
“I know the way,” Kendall declares, and then he winces at the sound, because he is clearly intoxicated. If he was sober, he would totally tell Carlos not to do anything he says. But he’s not sober, not at all, so he says, “Follow me.”  
  
Carlos grins and says, “Always.”  
  
And Kendall has to stop because the weird palpitation in his chest won’t let him go any farther.  
  
“You shouldn’t say that.”  
  
“Say what?”  
  
“That’s you’ll follow me _always_.”  
  
“Okay. I’ll follow you anywhere. Forever,” Carlos cheers.  
  
“No. I mean, you have to get your own life eventually, right?”  
  
“No. Why? Pssh.” He makes this dismissive noise.  
  
Kendall frowns, weirdly angry at himself. “I’m- I don’t want to keep you back.”  
  
“You’re not keeping me from doing anything, dude.”  
  
“But-“  
  
“Hey. Trust me,” Carlos says, his hands clapping against Kendall’s cheeks, holding him steady. “Trust me.”  
  
And Kendall does, implicitly. Carlos is silly and ridiculous and more than a little bit scatter brained. But he’s also there. Always, always, he is by Kendall’s side. Just like he promised, he follows Kendall everywhere.  
  
It’s a kind of strength that Kendall has forgotten, loyalty without even trying.  
  
He stumbles from the bar, Carlos’s arm clutched around his hip and the streetlights pool on the sidewalk like golden puddles, and Kendall wants to jump into them, to swim, except then he trips into Carlos who pulls him closer and he’s warm, solid, and Kendall already feels like he’s drowning so-  
  
He kisses him. He kisses him hard and wet and messy and it’s not anything like what Kendall has imagined because Carlos is not pulling away, he’s kissing him back.   
  
“I want you, I want you, I want you,” Kendall is mumbling against Carlos’s lips, and he feels every word in his bones, feels it when Carlos shivers against him, even though his body is scorching hot. “I want you, but-“  
  
And for the first time, Kendall doesn’t know what he was so scared of. Carlos is the same kid he’s always been; brilliant, sound and color and endless energy, even when everything gets too dark.   
  
“Don’t you get it?” He murmurs back into Kendall’s mouth. “You don’t have to protect me from anything. Let _me_ take care of _you_ for a little while.”  
  
All this time, Kendall has been trying to show Carlos that he’s strong enough. That he can stand on his own.   
  
How had he ever forgotten that Carlos has always, always been stronger?   
  
“Okay,” Kendall says, breathing gone harsh as Carlos’s hand cups his dick.   
  
“Okay?”  
  
Kendall nods, pressing into Carlos’s palm.   


\---  


  
They take a cab home, and then they’re in the Palm Woods. Kendall pulls Carlos into the room he shares with James, hoping against all hope that James is off on a date or doing whatever it is James likes to do when he’s not charming girls because Carlos is pressing him up against the door, locking it behind him and he’s got his mouth pressed against Kendall’s jaw, searching up towards his lips and Kendall’s can’t kiss him back because he has so many reasons, so many fucking reasons but he can’t really remember any of them right now so he lowers his mouth and-  


\---

  
He feels Carlos work his fingers inside of him slow, feels every callus and scar on those fingers he knows so well. He lets Carlos spread him open with a whimper, kissing down his ribcage, tonguing the places where his bone dips and curves. He’s pretty sure he imagined this differently, that he imagined being in control of this situation, but when it comes to Carlos Kendall doesn’t have anything like control.  
  
He bucks back, feeling Carlos’s fingers slide against something that makes his vision go hazy. He listens to the tell tale tearing sound of a condom wrapper and then the slap of plastic.  
  
Carlos kisses the curve of his ear, pushing into Kendall’s ass. The burn and the stretch is so much worse than his fingers, and Kendall’s body stills. The liquor numbs him to some of the pain, but it’s still there, shooting across his nerve endings, sharp and hot. Carlos mumbles an apology, shifting over him to withdraw, but Kendall clutches down on his shoulders, trying to keep him in place. He moves his hips experimentally, trying to change the angle. Carlos moans something unintelligible that might not even be English.  
  
“Kendall, I have to-“ he says, his hips stuttering forward. It still burns like a bitch, but there’s something good in it, too. There’s something about Carlos filling him; his dick, his flesh, his scent that’s good, even before his cock bumps up against Kendall’s prostate and fills his head with stars.  
  
Carlos fucks like he dances, teasing, all up in Kendall’s personal space in a really intimate way. He watches every cue, every nuanced quake of Kendall’s body for where to hit and when, what rhythm to move at, and when to go harder, and faster, and give him more. It’s like he can see in the space between their shared breaths when Kendall begins to come apart, lust like mercury in his veins, turning his whole body molten.  
  
It’s electricity arcing across his skin, building at the base of his spine into something that’s simultaneously amazing and terrible, pressure and bliss. Carlos is panting against his lips, his eyes dark, pupils blown wide open with lust. Kendall can taste him in his throat, can taste the sweat of his skin and the breath from his lungs and all of it makes him feel like he’s burning up inside. He needs the undulation of Carlos’s hips faster, the thrust of his cock and the way the head of it makes his vision go white, the way he can feel every inch slide out as easy as silk and then the shudder of his breath when he forces his way back in again and again, faster and harder until it washes over him in waves.   
  
He comes long and hard with Carlos buried inside him, drawing his name out of Kendall like a song. Less than a minute later, Carlos follows, shuddering against Kendall’s body while Kendall’s still riding out the end of his own orgasm.  


  
\---

  
Kendall wakes up the next morning, more than a little bleary and very, very confused about where he is. Until he sees Carlos’s, head resting on his chest. For a second he stays there, content to listen to Carlos breathe, and then-  
  
“Carlos. Dude- shit, I’m.” Kendall falls off the bed in his fervor to get away, because what the hell has he done? “I’m so sorry, I’m- fuck. I’m such a jackass.”  
  
Carlos throws him a lazy, half cocked smile and says, “Why?”  
  
“I. Am I dreaming?”  
  
“Do you dream about banging me?”  
  
 _Sometimes._  
  
“No, of course not.”  
  
“You’re not dreaming. Man, stop looking at me like that.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“Like you took advantage of me.”  
  
“But- I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”  
  
“For what? Never apologize for something that felt that good.” Then Carlos falters. “I mean, it did feel good, right? You came pretty hard.”  
  
Kendall feels his ears reddening in a really uncomfortable way. He isn’t used to blushing, least of all because of something that’s come out of Carlos’s mouth. Carlos is saying, “I mean, the whole apartment probably heard you.  
  
“It was-“ Kendall shuts his eyes and grits out “-great.”  
  
And it was. He can’t remember an orgasm that good since ever, even if it’s all splintered and hazy in his mind because of the liquor.  
  
Carlos beams.  
  
“I’m so impressed with myself right now, you have no idea.” He crawls up so he’s on his knees, the bed’s added height making it so that his face is almost even with Kendall’s. “That was fun. We should do it again.”  
  
“W-what?” Kendall chokes, because okay. This is not what he expected. At all.   
  
Carlos leans forward and smacks his ass. Then he sprawls against the comforter, laughing at Kendall’s expression.   
  
“You are such an idiot,” he says, his tone fond.   
  
“Not following.”  
  
“If you liked me, you should have just said something.”  
  
“I didn’t- um. I didn’t want to freak you out.”  
  
“Do I look freaked out? We’re buds. M’not gonna be mad at you just because you want in my pants. Sex is fantastic.”  
  
Tentatively, Kendall nods his agreement. He climbs back into bed, letting Carlos pull him close. Carlos nips at his ear, all open affection. “So, for next time, how do you feel about handcuffs?”  
  
“Next time?” Kendall vaguely remembers mention of doing this again being brought up seconds ago, but his brain is kind of stammering _what, what, what_ over and over again.   
  
Carlos does this thing with his eyes that clearly means _obviously_. “I plan on repeating that as much as possible. Just not right now, because I’ve got a date to go shoe shopping with the Jennifers. But tonight- wait, So, are we going out tonight?”  
  
Kendall stretches, curling into Carlos’s side. “No. I think I’m good right here.”  



End file.
